In his Poetics Aristotle used the Greek word for 'recognition' as a technical term in the analysis
of tragedy, a practice which still continues in literary criticism. Witness this clip from a dot-edu internet source:
Anagnorisis: The recognition achieved by the protagonist of a tragedy, usually
an understanding of, or higher wisdom gained by acknowledging his or her [tragic flaw] ... like Oedipus’ realizing
that he murdered his father and slept with his mother. In his Anatomy of Criticism, Northrup Frye states that “Anagnorisis
is not simply an awareness by the hero of what has happened to him, but the recognition of the determined shape of the life
he has created for himself, with an implicit comparison to the uncreated potential life he has forsaken.”
The following is not entirely related, but then not entirely unrelated either: Many people were probably
glad to read of the 12 rescued West Virginia miners in yesterday's paper - nice to have some good news for a change - and
unhappy to find that the initial story was almost the reverse of the tragic truth.
"Headlines for Wednesday, Jan. 4," says this morning's NY Times online, "included an article, '12 Miners Found Alive
41 Hours After Explosion,' about the mining accident in West Virginia. That article relied on attributed sources, including
a named official from the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, and victims' family members. Later
information determined that 11 miners were dead and one survived.
"Since this e-mail is compiled at 2 a.m. Eastern time, it did not include this new information, which broke about 3 a.m."
...
Anagnorisis also covers recognition scenes in which two characters discover one another's identity, as when Electra and
Orestes compare footprints, hair color, and birth marks - and finally arrive at the conclusion that they are, indeed, long
separated brother and sister. Unfortunately, instead of heading for the nearest chicken fried steak restaurant to swap
war stories over lunch, they immediately begin planning to avenge their father's death by killing their mother and her
lover. Bad karma.
Another dot-edu discussion of anagnorisis illustrates the term with a scene from the movie "Raising Arizona."
Sometimes these [recognition] scenes can become so familiar as to be comic rather than tragic, a characteristic
of classically influenced plots which the Cohen brothers took advantage of in Raising Arizona (1987). As the
movie veers between tragedy and comedy, the protagonist, Nicholas Cage, finds himself pursued by a bounty hunter played by
Randall "Tex" Cobb. At a crucial moment, as the bounty hunter is about to crush Cage in his arms, Cage's character grasps
and removes the arming pins of hand grenades attached to the bounty hunter's vest just as both see identical "Woody Woodpecker"
tattoos on each other's shoulders, implying (by anagnorisis convention) that they are somehow related, perhaps brothers.
The "brothers" spring apart in a double-anagnorisis, but revelation comes too late for the bounty hunter, alas, because he
cannot shed the vest of his profession before it destroys him.
Probably the most bizarre recognition scene is found in Eugene Ionesco's anti-play, "The Bald Soprano." In the
course of it, Mr. & Mrs. Martin discover that they are both arrived from Manchester, took the same train today, rode facing
one another in the same seat in the same railway car, live at the same address in the same flat, both have a daughter
with a red eye and a white eye whose name is Alice, and therefore conclude that they are indeed husband and wife, Donald
and Elizabeth. Joyfully, they fall asleep in one another's arms. Then the maid comes on stage and explains
to the audience that Donald's daughter's red eye is the left one, Elizabeth's daughter's red eye is the right one.
For all their careful logic, Donald and Elizabeth are mistaken.
Disney wouldn't touch it.
+++
